France: National Commission on Informatics and Liberty fined Solocal EUR 100'000 for breach of cookie consent rules

On 15 May 2025, the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) fined Solocal Marketing Services EUR 100'000 for violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive. The CNIL found that cookies with a marketing purpose were placed on users’ devices without valid consent when visiting the pages of websites published by Solocal, such as pages listing local professionals. CNIL considered that consent banners were inadequately configured and failed to prevent cookie placement by default. CNIL also noted that while Solocal had updated its consent mechanism in late 2022, cookies continued to be set in breach of the rules until August 2023.